What surprised me the most about Fried's excerpt was how awfully accurate his description of the game of school was. I had never really thought about school this way before reading this. Now, I see that most of the time, all school really was for me was doing my assignments on time and mindlessly searching for answers without actually trying to retain the knowledge. In fact, I could even remember instances from high school now where teachers were playing this game. A lot of teachers would assign us a ton of short answer questions to go along with whatever chapter we were reading to test how much we know about the chapter. However, the students always knew better than to take the time to actually read the whole chapter, and would instead just skim the chapter looking for the answers to the questions. Whether or not the student did the actual assignment, it was entirely possible to get an A.
I am definitely going to keep this excerpt in the back of my mind as I move through college. It is important to try and retain the material being taught in class, especially as college courses become more specialized to a student's major. In college, it's harder to play the game because students can't pass classes by simply doing assignments anymore; exam grades are weighted a lot more heavily in college, so it's important to really know the material. I guess my days of playing the game are over.
September 21, 2013
What surprised me the most about Fried's excerpt was how awfully accurate his description of the game of school was. I had never really thought about school this way before reading this. Now, I see that most of the time, all school really was for me was doing my assignments on time and mindlessly searching for answers without actually trying to retain the knowledge. In fact, I could even remember instances from high school now where teachers were playing this game. A lot of teachers would assign us a ton of short answer questions to go along with whatever chapter we were reading to test how much we know about the chapter. However, the students always knew better than to take the time to actually read the whole chapter, and would instead just skim the chapter looking for the answers to the questions. Whether or not the student did the actual assignment, it was entirely possible to get an A.
I am definitely going to keep this excerpt in the back of my mind as I move through college. It is important to try and retain the material being taught in class, especially as college courses become more specialized to a student's major. In college, it's harder to play the game because students can't pass classes by simply doing assignments anymore; exam grades are weighted a lot more heavily in college, so it's important to really know the material. I guess my days of playing the game are over.